News Photo

On the strength of a 7-pound kicker, Mark Rose brought a 19-pound, 9-ounce limit to the scale Saturday Mark Rose holds up his kicker bass en route to finishing second at Lake Guntersville.to push his total weight to 87 pounds, 4 ounces. Over the past few years, Rose has become an excellent TVA ledge fisherman. He did his homework for Guntersville by spending several days of prepractice scouring ledges with his ridiculously large Lowrance units. That extra effort resulted in a stable of 15 different areas, located from the mid-lake region down to the dam, three of which Rose described as big-fish spots.

“When we used to fish deep, we’d look for stumps and shells on our graphs. Now the technology is so good I look for schools of fish instead of just structure.”

Rose too used a variety of baits but his best was the Strike King 6XD (sexy herring color). He’d take a rattling 6XD and make precise casts to the deepest sides of the ledge corner. He’d then follow up with the same 6XD only in the Silent Stalker model. The baits were great for quality, but not for quantity.

“My partners caught more than me all week, but I knew if I stuck with the crankbait I’d get a few bigger bites each day.”

And that theory proved accurate. Unfortunately, he lost his two big bites on day three, which could have been the difference in contending for the win.